Book promotion campaigns only work if . . . you have a book. If you're still in the process of writing your book, then pay special attention to today's news about the latest computer virus. The virus, say all the news reports (including this cnn.com story), will activate itself on the third of every month, if your computer becomes infected. This virus is bad in that it can destroy all the data on your computer.
That means: practice safe computing. Click on only such email attachments as you are expecting -- otherwise, use the telephone to find out from the sender what the files are before you open them. Also, zealously back up the manuscript you're working on. The back up the back up, and back up the back up of the backup up. Make sure you store your (minumum of) three back ups of your manuscript in different places -- and, preferably, on three different media. Who among us hasn't had the experience of discovering that a CD or floppy disk no longer works, or that you used the wrong settings for your offline backup system, or that (and this is the ugliest of all) you only thought you were backing up your data when, in fact, something went wrong during the process so you have no backed-up data to restore when you need it. Once you've backed up the files, be sure they are what they are supposed to be, and be sure you know where they'll be if and when you need to restore them.
If you take the proper precauthions, then you'll know that, when it comes time to launch your book publicity campaign, you'll have a book to promote.
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